Khynom Barang - Reflections Of A Foreigner Living in Cambodia

In the letters that I have written to friends and family in the US, I have touched briefly on a subject that is very difficult to detail. It is easy to simply state that living here is very hard is itself, but when I try to put it down in words I cannot seem to give an answer that completely satisfies the question of why this is so. It is as if the language barrier that I experience on a day-to-day basis is affecting my cognizant faculties. For example, a running joke I have with my host family is that when I do not understand anything they say, I shrug my shoulders and say, “Khynom Barang.” This phrase literally means “I am a Frenchman,” but the word barang is used to refer to any foreigner of European ancestry. By saying this, I acknowledge my ignorance in trying to understand the world around me. In struggling with this, I have reached a feeling of determination to at least overcome this barrier in a non-spoken form. Thus, I hope that in writing this letter I will better describe the demanding nature of my current life.

Part of it has to do with the grueling schedule of the Peace Corps training. Currently, much of my daily routine is spent between teaching in the morning, studying Khmer in the afternoon, and forming lesson plans for the classes I am currently teaching. Even just the language classes and the teaching practice are exhausting by themselves.

Becoming fluent in Khmer in a very short period is next to impossible. There are virtually no cognates between English and Khmer, although there are a few between Khmer and French that are useful. Pain, café, sac-a-dos, and carrot (bread, coffee, backpack, and carrot) are all French words that are used in Khmer. The grammar of language is very easy as there are no verb conjugations or genders, with a few exceptions, but learning the words themselves is not all an easy task. We are slowly learning Khmer script, which is based on Sanskrit, in our language classes, but for the time being we have to rely on our own Romanization of the language. What that means is that every time you hear a word in Khmer, you have to write down what you think it would correspond to in roman letters. Quite often, the words that I write down in class do not match how to word should be pronounced, and I have to review what I have learned with my host family every evening.

Mixed in with these daily activities are the sporadic information sessions of health and cultural classes that are given to us every so often. I barely have enough time to read, write these posts, and play the violin. But the reason why it is so hard does not necessarily have to do with the daily routine. I put myself through harder regimes than this one when I was in university, but this has an added element. I often find that the stress of daily life can often be counteracted with exposure to those things that are comfortable and familiar in order to achieve some sort of balance. In this way, one can allow for some degree of sanity in a place where bizarre behavior is considered acceptable. Yet, it is this yearning for something familiar that makes the experience particularly hard.

When the bizarre and unfamiliar become a part of life that you have to adopt as your own, the desire for sense of normalcy from your former life is what makes the experience hard. Any kind of familiar reading material, food, or objects are the basis for cravings after anyone has spent any significant amount of time abroad. Chocolate, rice crispy treats, and Chipotle burritos are often high on the lists of things that people miss from America. If you visit a Mexican restaurant in Phenom Penh, however, the experience will often not be a good one. You will either get food poisoning, or enjoy the food enough to the point where you fully realize how much you miss the familiarity of the familiar.

Integration is the Key

Integrating into an unfamiliar society is often problematic for many people who have tried, and in the time that I have spent abroad I have seen three main ways in which this can be done. The first is one that resembles European colonial life, and is largely practiced by those who either work for the embassy or plan to take an extended vacation as a tourist. They constantly try to build walls around them through their culture, and try to recreate their former life as much as possible, with as much detail as possible. At the other end of the spectrum are those who decide to go native. This is to say that these people have decided to shed every aspect of their former life and culture in exchange for another. Some of these people are fascinating and remarkable in their effort, but there always seems to be some aspect of mild insanity in their story. This is not the kind that drives one to the asylum, but rather a wild, passionate, and perhaps unhealthy obsession.

In the middle of this spectrum is the life that a Peace Corps volunteer, largely, tries to lead in Cambodia. It is the effort to not abandon one’s cultures completely, and at the same time not to put up barrier against the outside world; therefore, to walk the middle path. The difficulty in this is trying to find a balance between what one can tolerate with respect to one’s own culture and system of values, and what one cannot stand the sight of. I have heard tales of disgust, horror, and tragedy from the some of the volunteers that have been here for almost a year and a half. Some of these are incredibly shocking, and the only incredulous aspect about them is the fact that the volunteers can say them with a phlegmatic expression on their face. While nothing has threatened my safety and security so far, I can already recount at least one story that shaken me a little.

The Evils of Drink

During some of the training sessions, some of the volunteers spoke about how Cambodian men pressure male volunteers to drink excessive amounts of alcohol. I had this happen to me for the first time this week, and despite the warning about it I was shocked at the amount of pressure there was. To recount the story, last Friday was a holiday for families who are of Cambodian-Chinese ancestry. Since my family is Chinese-Cambodian, I joined them as they burned paper money as an offering to their ancestors when I came back from teaching that day. We had a large meal for lunch, and inexpensive beer was provided. My host father offered me a can of Anchor Beer, which is generally tolerable, and I accepted out of an effort to be polite. During the meal, however, both my host father and our next-door neighbor raised their glasses in a continuous stream of toasts, and put an increasing amount of pressure on me to drain my glass. I explained that I had to go study Khmer after lunch, I did not like being drunk, it was inappropriate for a teacher to be drunk, and that I merely wanted to sip the beer to enjoy the taste. Not even a firm no would work with these men, and they only stopped when I could not stand it any longer and excused myself from the meal early. My entire host family thought that this was really funny as well, and kept repeating phrases that questioned my sobriety.

As I rode off on my bicycle, I was furious. How could these adult men have the maturity level of a doltish college freshman, and not understand that no means no? As I was silently fuming, I suddenly remembered what the country director told us on the first day that we arrived in Cambodia. “You will see things that shock you, and you will see things that will disgust you. But before you criticize and make assumptions, you have to ask yourself why these things are the way they are.” While mulling this over, I remembered that there is an incredible amount of pressure among Cambodian men to drink excessive amounts of alcohol. For example, if you are at a wedding or party, and you have drunk enough beer to make you vomit, the expectation is that you will then go throw up, come back, and drink again. What is even more shocking is that mature adults, and not the binge drinking college freshman of society do this sort of thing.

While this may seem to be a premature assumption about Cambodian culture, it seems that the concept of pleasure is much different from what I knew in the west. What I mean by this is that it seems to be categorized in separate and distinct spheres. For example, relations between men and women appear to resemble those of 19th century Victorian society. It is a relatively prudish society by our standards, and men and women barely touch each other before marriage. Beneath this veneer of politeness, respect, and strict moral behavior, however, lies the ugly truth that prostitution is widely spread and accepted here as well as in other large portions of Asia. The key to understanding why this paradox could exist is to know that men have relations with their wives for the sole purpose of producing offspring. Relations for the sake of pleasure are not acceptable, and are reserved for prostitutes. Thus prostitution thrives, and the spread of AIDS and other diseases remains unchecked. Relations for that of pleasure and reproduction are held in different spheres with very little crossover.

A similar opinion is held for the use of alcohol. Either one drinks alcohol to get raving drunk, or one does not drink at all. As the father of my host family put it, “Drink, no drunk? No fun!” In essence, what my host dad and neighbors were doing to me was the same thing that they would do to anyone of their friends or colleagues. It is also completely normal for people, especially women, who do not drink alcohol at all to simply accept this kind of behavior as mundane. The day after this party, I came home from language class at around five in the afternoon to find that the father of the family was lying face-down on the floor of the living room asleep. He owns several rice fields outside of town, and he usually spends long hours in the morning and afternoon tending to them. I assumed that he was simply tired, and I carried on my usual business of socializing with my host family. After I had showered, dressed, and come down the stairs from my room to dinner, I arrived in the living room and found the father lying in the same position. I asked the mother if something was wrong, or if he was simply tired. She shook her head and replied, “Koat at ah kum lang. Ban slo vung chia muy poomah (He’s not tired. He simply got drunk with his friends). During dinner, we simply ignored the fact that he was there. We spoke at normal volume levels, and I played chess with one of my host brothers until I went to bed at about eight thirty. I could hear the grandmother scolding the father later as I lay in bed, and him responding in a slow slurred speech. I really do not like it, but I have to understand why things like this happen. From the stories that I have heard, I am going to see this kind of pressure more often when I arrive at my permanent assignment. It is yet another thing which I have to adapt to.

You are probably wondering, dear reader, “If it is so hard, why are you doing this at all?” A lot of that answer has to do with the fact that I enjoy my work as a teacher, but also with the fact that the Cambodian people, or at least the ones that I’ve met so far, are really great. I love my host family, even if they yell at me to take a bath or put pressure on me to drink alcohol because at heart they are really great people. My language teachers are great, my students are great, and the relationships I have formed here I hope will be long-lasting. For me, at least so far, the people are the reason why I came here, and the people are the reason why I am staying.
There are often moments where I can relax and enjoy life for a little while. Hanging out with my fellow teachers at breakfast before school, sitting and chatting with my host family, or going out for fried frogs with one of my Khmer teachers on Sundays are all times that I treasure greatly.

I often wonder what living in Cambodia will do to me during the two years that I will be here. Looking at the faces of the some of the volunteers who are here, and I can see a haggard weariness during pauses as they look down at their good during a meal. It is something that I cannot particularly worry about too much, however, and I think I will continue my current life philosophy of taking the experience one day at a time. I am still a barang, but maybe life will be a little easier once I have gotten more accustomed to it.